She Wants to do Right but not Right Now
by mholub00
Summary: For a moment, nothing happens. When nothing continues to happen, he rolls over and flips on the light. (One-shot)


The room is dark, darker than he's used to without the city lights and their consistent flashing and blinking and all around brightness.

It's also cold, but thinking about that makes his teeth start to chatter and he's trying to be quiet, so he focuses on the dark.

He can't even make out where the ceiling starts and the wall ends and he's more than certain the sweatshirt she put on before she turned out the lights was his at some point. The navy blue looked familiar in a strange, nostalgic sort of way.

With the only sound being the quiet but constant hum of the hotel air conditioner, he can hear everything from the fly buzzing somewhere in the dark abyss to her quiet breathing; much too quiet breathing for anyone who is actually asleep. He decides she's definitely awake and this doesn't surprise him. Nothing she does really surprises him anymore and her mind is a twisted mess, so he knows she wouldn't be sleeping even if she could, and he know she can't.

Her reaction to an interruption to the silence, he gages, wouldn't be too bad. She doesn't really want to talk but he suspects she needs to and he's tired of the endless black that seems to be consuming everything. Besides, he would bet his new bow on the fact she wouldn't even get out of the bed.

The next time she rolls over and when the rustle of the sheets has subsided, he counts to two and whispers her name.

She groans and it sounds like her face is shoved in the pillow.

"Nat," he says a little louder.

"It's two thirty in the morning."

He rolls his eyes because it's not like either of them were asleep anyway.

"I have a question."

"Shut up," she says, her voice still muffled.

If he squints, he discovers, he can see the outline of her body in the black, lying curled up on the bed. "What did you think about when Coulson told you I was compromised?"

He's expecting some witty retort, a quick comment defending her true thoughts, but in the silence that follows, not even the air conditioner seems to be humming.

For a moment, nothing happens.

When nothing continues to happen, he rolls over and flips on the light. The golden glow illuminates only a small portion of the room, but he still has to blink a few times before he can see straight.

She's sitting up now, knees pulled to her chest, and he marvels for a second over how silently she can move when she wants to. There's something in her demeanor that he's grown used to recognizing, the slumped shoulders and hands over her eyes and the defeated sound to her deep breaths that come when she's tired of being indifferent and objective and uncaring; when he's mentioned that one thing she was trying so hard to remember around.

"I'm sorry Nat," he whispers. "You don't have to answer that."

She shakes her head but doesn't move her hands from over her eyes.

"I…thought I might never see you again," she says and her voice isn't shaking, isn't trembling. But it also hasn't gone into robot mood, and he's glad for that. "That if I had been with you instead of in goddamn Russia, we could've done something and you'd be fine and we could've disappeared to Fiji after. And I was going to kill whoever it was, since I didn't know who or what exactly had happened."

Bracing himself for the freezing air, he throws the blankets back and wanders to the other side of the room, sliding instead into the bed beside her. It's colder without previous application of body heat and he thinks he probably could've put on a shirt- he probably should've done _that_ four hours ago- but he decides against getting out of the bed again and pulls the blankets to his chin.

He pries one of her hands from her face, deliberately not commenting on the frozen temperature of her skin, and holds it tightly in his own, running his thumb over her knuckles. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." She lowers her other hand slowly, blinking at him with emerald eyes. "And then I focused on how much I would rather be talking to Stark then Banner because otherwise I was sure I'd lose my mind."

"Thank you for telling me," he says because he knows it's important to- she doesn't open up, tell the truth to just anyone.

She nods and turns the light out again, slipping back under the blankets. He's close enough now that he can see more than just her outline- her eyes, slight curls of the mess of her hair. She opens and closes her mouth a few times, tracing circles on his arm, and he waits expectantly for whatever she's going to say.

"Sometimes," she starts, "it worries me how…_dependent_ I am on you."

"I would give the world for you, I've decided." She doesn't mention that _he_ was the one that made her realize this. _He_ doesn't need to be brought up, not that directly. "I just wanted you to know."

Without another word, she rolls over with her back to him and he takes special notice of how she hasn't let go of his hand, and the way she managed to move closer in an act that would normally take a person farther away.

"Tasha?" he whispers for secrecy even though he knows no one else can hear them.

"Hmm?"

"I'm glad I didn't die before I met you."

If she were to mention anything, he would use the 'I can't sleep this way' excuse as he pulls her into him and tries not to cough when he gets a face full of hair.

This is far more comfortable, he thinks and it is, with his arm no longer twisted weird and the warmth of her back against his chest.

She doesn't mention anything.


End file.
